I spent time with my favorite people, crafted, cooked, baked, shopped, listened to Christmas music and just slowed myself down. It felt very selfish but I have really enjoyed it!
This week and the several previous weeks, God has wrought a deep sense of thankfulness for His grace in being always-present and the Sovereign hope of being with Him in the amazing future to come.
Partially, because I am studying through Daniel with some sweet women.
And,in part, because I am learning more each day about the beautiful and absolutely necessary practice of gospel-living. I see the gospel being exalted in my heart, in the lives of the people around me-young to old, the serving church that I am so privileged to be finding a place in, in my home where there were (and are still) incredible strongholds of unbelief and unrest about spiritual things. I've seen my heart dying to shy away from something difficult and the Spirit lead me right in to it anyways for the sake of the gospel, leaving me overwhelmed with thankfulness!
When I am tempted to live any other way, thinking on Christ's commitment to me has made all the difference.
Think of this. We know of his kenosis as being an incredible act of submission and an immaterial gesture to prove the willingness and desire of God to bring salvation to us.
Yes, Christ emptied Himself. He became a helpless babe. His commitment to me was already in affect. Did you catch that? He came from heaven to be a baby born in a manager. But His thought life was that of the impending wrath He would receive from His Father on my behalf!
He submitted to Mary and Joseph, experienced all the temptation's of a teen and then some, like being offered the entire world, and He remained sinless. He was committed to saving me even in the adolescent years, when our brains supposedly don't function on anything more than impulse and emotion. He remained faithfully committed to ransoming me. To the point of sweating droplets of blood in the garden.
Man! This isn't even scratching the surface of his commitment to me and I am stopped right in my tracks! Filled with thanksgiving, with praise for His grace, His endurance, His truly unparalleled love for me. Ultimately His commitment to me took Him through humiliation, excruciating physical and emotional pain up to death, and a spiritual wrath that otherwise would have had me burning in hell forever. I can't even wrap my mind around it. I can't even compare it to anyone or anything I know or understand.
We often comfort ourselves by saying that His grace is enough, when I think on His death by cross, wrath-recieving, heaven-shaking-resurrection commitment to me I am assured and it pleases every fiber of me to delight in His more-than-enough grace that will take all of eternity to start understanding. This commitment makes me thankful through and through, makes me full of songs to sing to Him and propels me to strive to always live in a away that exalts Jesus and his undying commitment to me.
I hope that brought thanksgiving to your hearts and I pray He enlightens us to recognize and be thankful for His grace upon grace!
That's all for now!
Posted from Blogium for iPhone
missed your posts
ReplyDelete